From: Paul G3WYW
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2022 14:39:56 GMT
Hi All,I have always enjoyed this contest and have taken part for a number of years from my modest home station. I saw Stew GW0ETF’s email in December last year looking for volunteers to run a HQ station in the upcoming (2022) Commonwealth Contest and after a quick discussion with some key members of my local radio club; Newbury and District Amateur Radio Society (NADARS); offered our new GB4GCT club station at Greenham Control Tower on the old USAF base in West Berkshire as a HQ station. After a couple of emails between us I was pleased to be offered the use of the G6XX call as a HQ station for the contest, after Graham G4FNL stood aside for us. Thanks Graham.   Greenham Control Tower is owned by the local Council and run as a Charity by a Trust with a museum and café open to the public from 10:00 till 16:00 on 5 days a week including weekends, so we had to negotiate with the Trust to allow us to remain on the premises and operate overnight and we have to thank our ex-Chairman Jeremy G4DOQ for getting us permission to do that.  We had set up the Station just before Covid broke out and the pandemic has prevented us from using the station until now.  The Commonwealth Contest gave us an opportunity to work some rare DX, test the station setup in a contest environment and learn any lessons for future operations from there.  Our original plan was to use the Clubs FLEX 6500 with my SPE 1K-FA Linear and our doublet strung out in an inverted V format within the confines of the Control Tower perimeter, however as the Linear wasn’t happy tuning the antenna on 40 metres and triggered the building alarms at 200W on most bands, that plan was abandoned on the Friday before the contest and we settled for the FLEX 6500 at 100W and the doublet tuned by the clubs MFJ auto tuner. We used N1MM+ and Flex Software running on the same PC but with separate Screens.  We had a team of 7 operators (M0TDW, G3WYW, G3RVM, G4DOQ, G0KPE, G4LMW, G3ZGC)  who operated the station on shifts throughout the 24 hours with two other members (JC 2E0JJC and Mark M0CUK our current chairman) who helped with logistics and security. Our first QSO with ZL3AT on 20M at the start boded well for us and we were suitably pleased! However that didn’t last as the bands seemed very quiet and we were not being heard. Checking the RBN showed us being received in DX locations but the dB levels were very low indicating we were there but not very strong. This meant breaking the pileups was difficult and keeping a run going a struggle. The first Canadian station worked was CJ3A around 90 minutes into the contest and our only Indian station VU2REC around  2 hours later. Our strategy was to run as much as possible as we hoped to be in demand, especially on the Sunday Morning with inter Gs on 80 and 40, but as conditions didn’t suit that we did quite a bit of S&P as well. We followed Don G3XTTs excellent article from PW a couple of years ago on Propagation for the Commonwealth Contest as much as we could. DX worked included 9Z4 Trinidad and Tobago, V31 Belize, ZF2 Cayman Islands, C56 Gambia, 9J Zambia, 5X1 Uganda, 5Z4 Kenya, VK Australia, ZL New Zealand and VU India.  Missed ones were 6Y5 Jamaica and ZS1 South Africa.  Overnight was very quiet with 80M not producing the QSOs runs that we had hoped for but by dawn, Richard G3ZGC was boosting the QSO count running on 80 and 40 picking up any DX that could hear us and the G’s that were up and about. We finished the last hour of the contest looking for anyone to work! Overall the contest was great success for us. Our location is ideal, high with a clear take-off in all directions, quiet with no local noise levels nearby. The Radio, PC and N1MM+ behaved themselves apart from one lockup on the Flex and once Rob G4LMW had sorted the N1MM+ Spot filtering and showing Multipliers we were away. Plans are already in place for next  year with a linear and beam, although careful planning will be needed as GCT is a Grade II listed building.  Thanks again to the  RSGB Contest Club for letting us use the G6XX HQ call. Unaudited results are as follow: 
73 Paul G3WYW 
1b.